Shant’s green eyes focused on me, and he folded his heavy arms across his chest. “I’m no angel, Dutch Brennan. But you are.”
Five
God, but I liked hearing Shant use my name and call me an angel.
Then I processed what he meant.
“An angel. An actual angel. That’s funny.” I glared at him. And a heartbeat later . . . “You’re serious.”
I closed my eyes. Opened them. “And you’re insane. Damn it. Look, today’s my thirtieth birthday. If I was an angel, don’t you think I’d ... um, well, have figured that out by now?” I wiggled my fingers at him. “Look. No beautiful golden lights or heavenly music.” I shrugged my shoulders. “And no wings. Wings are kind of standard issue for angels, wouldn’t you say?”
Shant kept looking at me, as if puzzling through everything I was saying. I’d seen delusional people do this before, try to fit all the facts into their warped perception of the universe. I’d just never seen a delusional winged man do it before. A winged man who looked like a god and called me an angel.
“You’re a half-blood. It’s the only answer.” He ran his hand through his hair. “And today, when you came of age, the Raah became aware of you.”
This was getting worse.
What would it take to get a supernatural winged being back to Riverview’s admission office? I rubbed the sides of my head with my fingers. Except, Riverview’s first floor had been blasted to bits, I’d gone soppy over said supernatural winged being and let him fly me back to my apartment.
Greeeeaaat.
Even better - I still wanted to kiss the crazy son of a bitch.
I so needed to lose my licence over this.
“You are an angel.” Shant folded those sexy arms over his to-die-for chest. “Take me to your parents. I’ll prove it to you.”
“My parents are dead,” I shot back, then clamped my mouth shut.
Oh.
Oh God.
The image of my mother’s face hovered in my mind, as ethereal and beautiful as ever. And I saw Amberd, the fortress in the clouds, with its round, ruined stone towers.
Shaddai. That’s what my mother had said on our journey up the mountain. Come here to call them. They’ll hear you if you truly need them.
My legs instantly went rubbery, and I made my way to the couch and sat down, staring open-mouthed at Shant. My skin felt hot and cold at the same time, and my voice sounded shaky and weird when I found enough of my wits to speak.
“Amberd. I didn’t ... I didn’t call you. My mother said I could go up the mountain, to the fortress in the clouds, but I didn’t do it. So how did you find me?”
Shant touched his chest with his palm, and for a moment I saw the outline of the phoenix wounds that had so upset me when I first saw him at Riverview.
This time, the effect was different. It felt like some sort of answer, or maybe a clarification.
“I answered a debt of honour,” Shant explained in a tone that suggested sorrow and new understanding. “When an angel dies on Earth, they can use their essence to send a message to us, their protectors who failed them, and we are bound to respect their dying request.” He lowered his gorgeous head as I processed that my mother hadn’t been killed by a knife-wielding maniac, but by some loony fire-demon instead. Those marks on her chest when I found her - she had carved them herself before she died.
The message.
A communique to the Shaddai.
That’s why Shant had shown up in my admissions office, bearing the same marks, or, more accurately, the memory of them. Of that message. He must have submitted to the police and emergency room staff because he wasn’t certain exactly who he was supposed to protect, only the general area where I was.
“Someone bound me to you long ago, Dutch Brennan.” Shant’s eyes were so intoxicating I could hardly stand to look at him. “Someone wished for you to be protected, should the Raah ever come to know of your existence, and your life on Earth be threatened.” He kept looking at me, those green eyes swimming with a thousand emotions I couldn’t name. “Your birthday. When the Raah could sense you, so could we, and I answered the debt. Tell me - do you know who offered you such a gift?”
My throat clenched, and I had to rub my jaws to make them work enough to say, “My mother.”
In the long, quiet moments that followed, I was able to tell Shant what she looked like, and the Armenian name she used -and how she died, beaten and bruised, neck broken, with the phoenix carved over her heart.